15 Most Underrated Movies Of The 90s

10. Mystery Men

Mystery Men
Universal Pictures

It’s maybe not wholly correct to say that Mystery Men is an underrated movie in the classic sense, but there definitely needs to be a reframing of it as we approach its 20th anniversary.

Let’s recap: Mystery Men combines a relatively large cast of superheroes, all of which parachute in from positions of relatively similar star-power. Stiller is the big name, undoubtedly, but Macy, Azaria, Garofalo, Izzard, Rush, Kinnear, and Kel from Kenan and Kel are all immediately recognisable faces. Also Paul Reubens is there.

In a mere 2 hours we get small slices of world building with Captain Amazing being the big dick in Champion City, origin stories of various depth for most of our crew, and a standalone narrative about Casanova Frankenstein bending reality with his “Psycho-frakulator”.

At the time, the lukewarm reception to this film was “yeah, sure, this is fine I guess, but the most impressive thing is that it actually works”.

In 1999 that wasn’t particularly big praise, but after a whole decade of team-up movies either requiring 18 standalone titles just to make sense, or spectacularly bombing with both the audience and the critics, Mystery Men deserves recognition for being way, way ahead of its time.

[Adam Clery]

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